And they tell me you are wicked
by Dayadhvam
Summary: The city and the man—Butchers for the World, though they have not the heart for it. Sam in the 5x04!verse.


**Title:** And they tell me you are wicked  
**Author:** Dayadhvam  
**Rating/Pairings:** PG-13 (language, reference to gore). Gen.  
**Summary:** The city and the man—Butchers for the World, though they have not the heart for it. Sam in the 5x04!verse.  
**Notes:** Written for **sistabro** in the **spn_summergen **fic exchange, Aug. 2011, originally posted on LJ; I used prompt (3) _the Union Stock Yards in Chicago_ and drew inspiration for tone & atmosphere from (1) _fusion with Stephen King's The Dark Tower series_. Title is from Carl Sandburg's "Chicago"; spoilers up to the 5x04!verse. Thank you to **kalliel **for looking over this, as always :)

* * *

In Chicago, the bases of the skyscrapers were decorated by windswept patterns of broken glass, the sidewalks riddled by bullet holes like obsolete computer punch cards. Sam had wandered into the old industrial areas on his way up north, saw the apartments half-collapsed and the perpetually gray sky. When a man approached him and told him, _Not there, you shouldn't go to the yards_, Sam said, "It's all abandoned buildings, what's the difference here and there?"

The man didn't reach out to shake Sam's hand. Sam let his arm fall away, his fingers twitching aimlessly against his side; could not avert his eyes from the man's suspicious gaze. I don't mean to be a threat, he wanted to add. I'm normal.

He kept his mouth shut. Over the years, he had grown worse at lying to himself.

"Strange things in there," the man muttered darkly. "Look, it don't matter one way or the other to me how you end up, but seeing as the world's full of shit I should let you know where the shit goes, man to man. So long as you don't kip in our place. Yeah?" He watched Sam unblinkingly, watery blue eyes threaded through with the bloodshot red tint of sleeplessness. Prominent brows bracketed his eye sockets; the shape of his skull revealed itself under his skin, the curve of a vulture's beak mirrored in the line of his jaw. These were hard times, even for scavengers.

Sam's stomach roiled and turned over with a small grumble. He was almost certain all the nearby grocery stores had been emptied out. He pulled the corners of his mouth up weakly, tried to focus—he needed shelter now, and was more likely to find that than food. "What do you mean—what's strange?"

The man raised his hand and jerked his thumb in the direction of the great gate, which squatted blankly like a grim faceless statue. Acid rain had methodically eaten away at the limestone and left behind distorted crevices—a crowd of screaming faces, elongated and stretched out by the torturous precipitation.

"All the dead meat there," he grunted. "They don't like humans coming into their territory."

Sam passed his gaze over the man, thin and brittle and battered down. Thought: they too could be called dead meat. "Thanks for the tip then," he said. "Name's Sam."

"Nice to meet you." But the man did not return the favor. A name meant nothing to him.

**oOo**

English literature class had introduced him to the stock yards. He couldn't remember the name of the main character in _The Jungle_, but he had never forgotten the important lines. One kid had drowned. Another kid had been eaten by rats. Someone had fallen into a vat and been made into sausage—or had that only been workers' gossip? Sam could easily imagine a morbid anecdote or two, tossed out by a laborer while he busied himself in slitting a pig from neck to navel on the disassembly line. As a young boy, he had wondered how it must have been to be a slaughterer.

In all his life Sam had never happened to gut a hog—but, by now, he had sliced open enough animals and monsters and people to make at least an educated guess.

The bloodstains on the walls and floor had not fully faded. A sturdy enough place to stay for the night, as places went—Sam nodded to the empty air, let his pack slide to the ground as he kicked off his shoes. Flexed his toes and ankle: first left, then right. Then he put his sneakers back on. You couldn't let yourself be caught offguard and unprepared, for that was something only an idiot would do in this time and age. A stray nail or wire could easily cause tetanus.

The air carried with it the smell of burned fat. Sam wrinkled his nose.

**oOo**

"And I said to him, you're a fucking dumbass," Dean said cheerfully.

"Hypocrite. _You're _a dumbass." Sam snorted, but he clinked his beer against his brother's, downed it with a sigh. Dug his toes into the grass, wriggled them like worms near the campfire. "So he was being insubordinate to the camp leader. What'd you do then?"

"Christ, I gave him a super awesome solo mission. I said you think you don't need the rest of us, fine. Go fuck yourself with a chainsaw and then fuck off, 'cause you're not doing us any favors. Fucker ate our food and used our shit and then went round saying he was turned into slave labor—he doesn't know what kind of goddamn world he's living in, poor bastard."

"Dean," Sam said wearily, "you swear too much."

"Nah, you swear too little. Prissy thing." Dean leaned toward the fire; the red-hot glow slithered over his face like lava. "Even Cas loosened up, though that's not saying much. He just needs some more shitty beer."

"You're drinking it."

"Dude, 'course I'm saving the shitty beer for myself. You think I'm dumb?"

Sam couldn't suppress the grin from surfacing, slowly, quietly. "You don't have to ask that question, you know," he said. Thought, you've always been able to do so much. And I—and I—

Thought, as he opened his eyes: —and I haven't seen you in three years. The warmth of the dream slipped away from him like mist; awake, he stared up at the ceiling, through the ghost of the bull that bent over him.

He could not bring himself to be surprised. The bull twitched his ears, as blood dribbled steadily from the gash on his neck to drip into a puddle by Sam's elbow. When the bull swung his head to the side, Sam could see white ribs showing in the dark, veined with bloody rivulets and stretched muscle tendons, like a mishmash of marble colored crimson and white.

His horns curved upward, sharp and proud like the prongs of Lucifer's trident.

Sam didn't care if he was too paranoid. "Go away," he said. "Or will you let the ghost gore me? You letting me die for once?"

The bull's eyes flickered in the dark.

"Call him off, Lucifer," Sam said. A drop of blood fell on his forehead, but he didn't blink—stared through the ghost right at the ceiling, the plaster cracked and slowly broached by mold. Jess was no longer there. "Let me sleep."

He closed his eyes then, and tried to summon back the fire, and the beer, and Dean; but the chilly night pricked his skin, shooting darts of frost straight to the bone. In the morning, he thought, it'll be warmer in the morning—

**oOo**

In the morning, he went to the edge of town.

Sam shaded his eyes; stared down along the highway asphalt; pointed his feet north. The laces of his sneakers flapped feebly with each step. He adjusted the strap of his pack. The breeze coolly kissed his skin, and died. Dean was somewhere to the east, to the south, but Sam reminded himself: too late to save anything, to see him again—what's there to say now?

The ghostly scent of piss and blood hovered around Sam like a dead butcher's perfume as he followed the road out of Chicago.

**-fin-**

* * *

_There are secret highways in America, highways in hiding. This place stands at one of the entrance ramps leading into that network of darkside roads, and Callahan senses it. It's in the way the Dixie cups and crumpled cigarette packs blow across the tarmac in the pre-dawn wind. It whispers from the sign on the gas pumps, the one that says PAY FOR GAS IN ADVANCE AFTER SUNDOWN. It's in the teenage boy across the street, sitting on a porch stoop at four-thirty in the morning with his head in his arms, a silent essay in pain. The secret highways are out close, and they whisper to him. "Come on, buddy," they say. "Here is where you can forget everything, even the name they tied on you when you were nothing but a naked, blatting baby still smeared with your mother's blood. They tied a name to you like a can to a dog's tail, didn't they? But you don't need to drag it around here. Come. Come on."_  
—Stephen King, _Wolves of the Calla_


End file.
